Hopewell
Deposit type & geology
Gold-bearing sulfide-replacement veins and gold-quartz veins in Precambrian schist and gneiss, plus placers (~95% of historic production).
Precambrian schists and gneisses, Tusas Mountains.
Age: Precambrian host; vein age not independently confirmed this session.
Structural geology & terrain
Vein/structure orientation: Quartz veins in schistosity/shear zones of the Moppin Metavolcanic Series
Named controlling structure: No single named fault — schistosity/shear-zone control; the granite of Hopewell Lake (~1,467 Ma) is the intrusive control
Elevation range: 9,803 ft (Croesus Mine) — the highest-elevation district on this map
Tusas Mountains, forested (ponderosa to spruce-fir), seasonal/snow access limitations — a sharp contrast to most other districts' desert settings.
High-resolution terrain
~6 m/pixel lidar-derived hillshade (USGS 3DEP) — fine enough to reveal old mine workings, waste-rock piles, trenches, and roads the statewide terrain layer can’t show.
Historical production
~24,000 oz Au estimated (NMBGMR Resource Map 24: ~15,000 oz placer + ~8,000 oz lode per McLemore 1994), roughly $300,000 in contemporary value (Circular 5), about 95% from placers, through the early-to-mid 20th century.
Sources: NMBGMR Circular 5; NMBGMR Resource Map 24; New Mexico Geology v.16 n.2 (McLemore 1994) researched — see sources
Current status
Historic placer-dominant producer; current status not independently verified this session.
Recency not verified
Current claim/permit status was not independently researched this session.
Land ownership & directions
U.S. Forest Service land — open to mineral entry under the 1872 Mining Law, but surface use is regulated by the Forest Service and may include wilderness-adjacent or sensitive-area restrictions.
Tusas Mountains, Rio Arriba County — likely National Forest, not independently confirmed this session. Northern New Mexico, Tusas Mountains area.
See specimen photos (mindat.org) → — this app doesn’t host specimen photos itself; this searches mindat.org’s own mineral-specimen database, which isn’t necessarily specific to this exact district.
This pin is a generalized district/historic-site reference point, not a surveyed claim boundary — routes may cross private or patented inholdings where public access isn’t guaranteed even if a road reaches the site. Backcountry mine areas commonly have unmarked shafts, unstable ground, and no cell service; confirm current access and safety conditions (land manager, county, or landowner) before heading out.
Tailings reprocessing potential
About 95% of production was direct placer recovery, not milled lode ore — less of a traditional tailings target than a stamp-mill or flotation district.
This is a documentary heuristic, not assay data.The tier above is inferred from historic production era, processing method, and ore character already cited elsewhere on this page — nobody has sampled or assayed this district’s tailings as part of this research. Actual recoverable gold content can only be established by physical sampling.
Reprocessing tailings is regulated mining. Disturbing or reprocessing historic mill waste requires the same NM Mining Act permitting as new mining (see the regulatory companion guide), regardless of who currently holds the claim or surface rights — and ownership of the tailings material itself is a separate legal question from mineral rights on the underlying land.
Legacy tailings can be hazardous. Pre-modern processing commonly used mercury (amalgamation) or cyanide (heap leach), and can carry elevated arsenic and other heavy metals — not a casual sampling target, and disturbing contaminated material can carry real environmental liability.
Geologist’s read
One of the state's more legitimate Precambrian-hosted gold occurrences (like Gold Hill and Willow Creek), and notably placer-dominant despite the lode source being Precambrian rather than Tertiary — most of NM's big placer districts (Ortiz, Elizabethtown-Baldy) trace to Tertiary alkaline lodes instead. An MRDS spatial sweep separately flagged the "Bromide No. 2 District" (~$50,000 production, 1881–1940) as the largest secondary cluster found via blank-district grid analysis — but NMBGMR's own RM-24 explicitly describes it as "part of the larger Headstone district" and geologically paired with this Hopewell entry, so it is treated here as the same district complex rather than added as a separate one.